FOOTNOTES.
Reading edition
“The farmer, vext, packs up his bed, And all the household stuff, and chairs, And with his boy betwixt his knees, his wife Upon the tilt—sets out and meets a friend, Who hails him, ‘What! Art flitting?’ ‘Yes, we’re flitting,’ says the ghost, For they had packed her among the beds. ‘Oh! Well!’ the farmer says, ‘You’re flitting with us too! ‘Jack, turn the horse’s head, and home again.’”
There are sundry other ghosts, or witches, remembered in the neighbourhood, which may be heard of by the curious.
In “A Short Treatise on the Isle of Man,” by James Chaloner, governor, date 1656, it is stated that all the clergy who are natives have this title, even in one case a curate being so styled. In Bale’s “Image of bothe Churches” (circa 1550), it is said, “the most ragged runagate among them is no less than a Sir, which is a Lord in the Latin.” In Pulleyn’s “Etymological Compendium,” we find “The title of ‘Sir’ was given to all who had taken a degree, or had entered into Orders.” Thus, Hearne, the Antiquary, after he had taken the degree of B.A., was addressed as “Sir Hearne” (Aubrey’s Letters, i. 117), and William Waynfleet (afterwards Bishop of Winchester), when he had taken the same degree, was called “Sir Waynfleet,” (“Chandler’s Life,” p. 54), Chaucer in his “Canterbury Tales,” speaks of “Sir Clerk,” “Sir Monk,” and it even appeared in Acts of Parliament, as 12 and 13 Ed. IV., N. 14, “Sir James Theckness, Preste,” and i. Henry VII., p. 11, “Sir Oliver Langton, Preste? Sir Robert Nayelsthorp, Preste.”
The name was probably originally spelt Gode-rich, and a Latin epigram was composed, in allusion to this, as follows:—
“Et bonus et dives, bene junctus et optimus ordo, Prœcedit bonitas, pone sequuntur opes”;
which may be Englishised thus:—
“Both good and rich, duly combined, The good in front, the rich behind.”
There is probably a trace of the Goodrick family in a carved stone over the kitchen door at the farmhouse close by the church, on which the device is a cross “fitchée,” rising from another recumbent cross, combined with a circle, between the initials L and G, with the date above 1544.